Overview

Akeim Toussaint Buck is a performing artist, choreographer and artistic director whose cross-disciplinary collaborations integrate the expressive capacities of voice and movement. Informed by methodologies of kick boxing, yoga and the Afro-Brazilian martial art form capoeira to Caribbean,hip hop and contemporary dance influences, his performances aspire to an orchestral musicality involving spoken word poetry, singing and beatboxing. With improvisation and acute listening at the core of his own practice of vocality and movement, which he calls Beatmotion, the artist embraces the holistic potential of dance to translate the affective dimension of sociopolitical realities. Evoking strong pathos and narrative intensity while remaining accessible and free spirited, Toussaint Buck’s work engages audiences as immersive participants rather than passive observers.

At Sharjah Biennial 15, Toussaint Buck presents Windows of Displacement (2017), a dance theatre solo show that examines themes of migration, belonging and identity through an autobiographical lens. Born in Jamaica and raised in the UK, the artist stages the universal by way of the personal, interweaving memoir and ancestral memory to open a window onto threads of oppression both historical and contemporary, from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to present-day exploitative mining practices in the Congo. Incorporating movement, spoken word, song and projected imagery, the performance gives voice to the lived experiences of those afflicted by the dehumanising systems of imperialism, colonialism and global displacement.